“The Surfer's Palm Tree”
by Pablo Capra
Part of a series on overlooked Malibu history
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| Ted’s palm tree marks where the Berkeley family lived in the 1940s. Photo by Rainer Hosch, 2019-09-19. |
The palm tree at the Topanga intersection links us to the surfers of the 1940s, particularly Randall Edward “Ted” Berkeley (1912-1997), a greensman who rescued it from a film set, and wrote the tale in The Malibu Times (1977-12-02).
"…as I rounded the corner of the stage, I almost stepped on a thirsty little palm in a one gallon can… [that] had served its photographic purpose to the industry…. I picked it up and… drove to my shack on the coast highway…. [M]y wife held a flashlight while I planted the little palm."
Ted, his wife Sylvia (1919-2000), and their daughters Bonnie (1938-2011) and Wendy (b.1943) rented their green shack in the summer of 1943. A Pasadena High School swimmer, he got into surfing with his best friend Steve Balker, whose VW van ferried them up and down the coast. He surfed in red trunks like another buddy, Santa Monica lifeguard Pete Peterson, and made his own wooden surfboards using a butcher knife and sand paper. He was lucky enough to meet, probably at San Onofre, early Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku.
He wore laced pants and tennis shoes without socks like a sailor, and had all the typical tattoos: a ship, a sparrow, a star, a spider. He greased his hair back and lifted weights. His daughters only saw him cry once, when their dog Moose, an Irish Setter, was killed on PCH.
“Ted was macho,” says neighbor Larry Franklin (b.1930). “He would go the icehouse behind Potter’s Topanga Trading Post [now the Malibu Feed Bin] and carry a block of ice home on his bare shoulder. He was great at getting along with people, and probably the handsomest guy I’d seen.”
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| Sylvia and Ted Berkeley, with daughters Wendy and Bonnie. Photo c/o Berkeley family, circa 1946. |
Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Ted and his siblings moved to Hollywood in 1918 for his mother’s respiratory problem. Separated from her husband, she started working as a film extra.
Ted grew into a teenage daredevil, racing cars and motorcycles when he was barely old enough to drive, and making deliveries for bootleggers. He moved to San Francisco in the 1930s to work on the Golden Gate Bridge, but got a job at a bar instead, where he taught himself to play piano and trumpet.
His mother became the live-in housekeeper to a German family of child actors, notably Virginia Weidler (1927-1968). When Ted returned, around 1936, he formed a jazz band called The Pep Brothers with Virginia’s three brothers, and married her sister Sylvia. Later, the band achieved success without him as The Weidler Brothers Orchestra.
Ted and Sylvia held hands wherever they went. He didn’t want her to act, so she became a dance teacher from home, and later a Hollywood seamstress. She was a devout Christian Scientist, but creativity was also essential in their lives. He’d play piano and sing while she cooked dinner, and they’d tap dance in the kitchen to the 1927 song “Side by Side.”
Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of moneyMaybe we’re ragged and funnyBut we’ll travel along, singin’ a songSide by side
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| The Pep Brothers band. Ted Berkeley and the Weidler family: Walter, Renee, Sylvia, Warner, George, and Virginia. Photo c/o Paramount Pictures, 1936. |
Ted worked at the gas station near the Malibu Pier, among other jobs, while pursuing film work with his brother Mowbray “Bunny” Berkeley Jr. (1911-2004). He started as a studio security guard, rising to the position of greensman, and ultimately property master. Bunny became a set decorator.
On payday, Ted would buy his daughters candy bars at Potter’s, where the owner let him play with a fancy gun that became the subject of another The Malibu Times story (1977-11-11).
"Every night when I came home from work I would stop at Charlie’s and buy my cigarettes and some beer. When I entered the store I would first reach under the counter by the cash register and take out, of a holster, a nickel-plated Spanish .38 revolver…."
The local kids fished or raced to Castle Rock on their paddleboards, but Ted noticed that they couldn’t surf. So one day, in 1945, he gave the first lesson to Larry Franklin and brothers Edward “Ted” (1928-1951) and Fred Harrison (b.1931), from the beach; brothers Dave (1928-2015) and Roger Sweet (b.1930), from the Rodeo Grounds; and Howard Terrill (b.1929), from the Step Inn Cafe at the intersection. Dave Sweet would go on to change the surfing world by building the first commercial foam boards.
In 1946, the Berkeleys rented the downstairs of the Franklins’ house. Larry had made his own redwood board, but Ted showed him how to lighten it with balsa wood. Younger brother Sam (b.1936) received encouragement from the Harrisons.
“The stepfather [Evan Harrison (1905-1988)], who I knew only as Gramps, gave me a Waikiki redwood and balsa surfboard when I was about 12, which I loved and learned to surf on,” Sam explains. “We used to meet on the beach frequently, and he had a distinctive greeting each time. He’d raise both arms to about head height and wiggle his hands back and forth. I still do that from time to time without thinking.”
The Harrisons lived in the 1920s bathhouse that still had a painted sign on the side, and a defunct highway underpass in back. They rented the downstairs to Western actor Tim Holt (1919-1973), who tried to rescue a deer from the ocean with his paddleboard in 1948, according to the Topanga Journal (1948-04-09).
"He finally maneuvered the deer onto a rocky reef where he tried to lasso the buck. But the rope became so heavy with salt water that lassoing was impossible…. Holt was badly cut by barnacles and his paddleboard drifted out to sea."
Other surfers included James Richard “Dick” Hunt (1926-1967), who lived at the intersection, and his best friend James J. “Mike” Roberts (1925-2014), from the Rodeo Grounds.
“One of Dick’s legs was shorter from polio,” Larry remembers. “His parents brought him to the beach to recover, and he ended up becoming the best surfer there. I admired his abilities and harmony with the ocean. Mike rode a paddleboard with a pin tail and a flat nose. It was a hell of a good board. You could stand right on the nose, and it wouldn’t perl. I bought it from him when Ted taught the kids how to surf.”
Surfing’s first dedicated photographer, Don James (1921-1996), documented the moment the US entered World War II, standing in front of his beach rental with Ed Fearon (b.1921) and Jack Quigg (b.1922). The photo was published in Surfing San Onofre to Point Dume: 1936-1942 with the caption: “It was a balmy Sunday and the news about the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor was coming in over the radio. We were paying sixty dollars a month for rent, which was split three ways, and life was good. Suddenly, everything had changed. We all knew we were going off to war.”
Brothers James (1922-2007) and Bob Talmadge (1924-2009), of Las Tunas Beach, were the sons of actor Buster Keaton. Half-brothers Jerry Hanes (b.1924) and Bobby Jacks (1927-1987) lived a couple turns up Topanga, at Brookside. In 1949, Jacks married another surfer, Darrylin Zanuck (1931-2015), whose women’s board sparked a trend to build smaller.
A top surfer of the 1960s, Mike Doyle (1941-2019), lived to the west of the Franklins’ house until he was seven with his parents, wrestling promoter John and Kitty Doyle. Their guests included Gorgeous George, Baron Michele Leone, George Temple (Shirley’s brother), Primo Carnera, and Ed “Strangler” Lewis.
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| TOP: Ted and Sylvia Berkeley, unknown. BOTTOM: Primo Carnera, Bob and Kay McLaughlin, unknown, Bunny and Dorothy Berkeley. Photo c/o Berkeley family, circa 1946. |
Around 1948, the Berkeleys moved to Las Flores Beach, where Ted became a body surfer. They had three more children: Debbie (b.1951), Bambi (b.1954), and Randy (b.1956).
In 1962, they moved to Malibu Park, to a house that Ted decorated with film props, like Western antiques, cow skulls, and candy-glass bottles. His daughters competed in horse shows with the Trancas Riders and Ropers. His son followed Ted’s passion for motorcycle racing, and still lives in Malibu, in Decker Canyon.
Ted wrote over a dozen stories about his early life for The Malibu Times, as well as a couple unpublished novels, and many songs. He was pleased to see that his palm tree continued to grow after his old neighborhood had been demolished for a public beach.
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Pablo Capra is the Archivist for the Topanga Historical Society and author of Topanga Beach: A History 1820s-1920s (2020).
